Posted: 2 July 2024 Author: Carol Thompson & Neil Hopkins

Have you ever done a roadmap activity? It is a tool for exploring experiences and feelings using the metaphor of a journey. Sometimes it provides a focus for reflection, sometimes it is a way of planning future progress, occasionally it can be both. To see an example, take a look at Figure 1 which represents one of our roadmaps on the journey to publication.

This type of activity provides a vehicle for examining our experience and (if we choose to share it), is a way of telling our ‘story’ to others. On the surface, this might seem like a self-indulgent pastime but, as Bolton suggests, our stories are more than just entertaining yarns; they are a way of constructing meaning from our experiences and developing insight into who we are and how we want to be (Bolton, 2001). This is important stuff, not least because it illustrates how our past informs our future. By telling our stories, we not only navigate experience, we open it up to scrutiny so that we might see it through a variety of lenses or from a variety of perspectives. This, in turn helps to establish personal ‘anchors’; those important values that underpin, or over time habituate, our responses to events. They might be beliefs like: ‘always treat people with respect’ or ‘we need to be good learners if we are to be good teachers’. Such anchors provide a focal point and offer the option of choosing a response to events rather than getting caught up in the tidal wave of activity. Our personal values might also inform, complement, or simply mirror our chosen professional values; equally, they might conflict with those professional values forced upon us. Our professional values, ethics and identity emerge from the interaction of the various value systems in which we operate.

In our book, Reflections on identity: Narratives from educators, educators with a range of professional and personal backgrounds outline their professional stories. In each chapter, an individual journey is explored through a chosen lens and within a specific context or sets of contexts. As each protagonist dissects their experience, the story evolves outlining the challenges faced and questions raised. Authors reflect on how their professional identities took shape through contextual events and through their interactions with key players. Some authors expressed a desire to fit in, or to emulate what they saw as positive actions; others described a sense of opposition – a desire not to be like their colleagues.

Like any journey, identity formation is based on a series of choices. Opportunities present themselves, and individuals pursue/accept or reject what is on offer. oTo persist with the journey metaphor, our route of travel (and the roadblocks and diversions we sometimes have to navigate whilst on the journey) is not determined by ourselves alone. Society (be it through parents, teachers, colleagues, mentors and others) has a view on, and can even set limits to, who we are and which way we should go. They will have opinions on which roads to take, when to take them and what mode of travel we should employ. The journey is not determined by us alone, but we do have a modicum of control if we choose to. In that sense, identity and agency are fellow travellers – one is needed to support the other if the time and effort is to be seen as eventually worthwhile.

The landscape we pass whilst on our individual journeys differs for everyone. Identity is deeply contextualised and it is a personal story. When asked by someone “What do you do?”, others are almost inevitably seeking an answer that enables them to factor us into some kind of social calculus, a cartography that shows all the various coloured lines and contours in which people find a surface meaning; this may tell them who this other person is and where they stand in relation to us.

What we hope to have shown in Reflections on Identity is that a narrative of an individual’s working life is so much more than roads on a map. The landscape is important (and that includes the internal landscape we recognise and chart through our own feelings and attitudes whilst looking out of the window at our colleagues as passing traffic). Even if we are on the same road as others at this moment in time, we have taken different routes to get there, and this will affect our perceptions of where we are and where we want to go. The context, in this sense, is key – the road will never be the same for any two people travelling on it at any one time and it will be different again for those who follow. What we see out of the window and with our own eyes will depend on the circumstances we have encountered prior to the looking. When someone asks “What do you do?”, we, in all likelihood, give the typical one or two word response that describes our role at that time but there is usually a significant backstory that informs our short response. The story is the journey and the journey is the story. By using narratives, as the individual chapters of the book did, we hoped to facilitate both descriptions and, in doing so, encourage others to explore their own professional paths.

Reference

Bolton, G. (2001) Reflective Writing and Professional Development. London: Paul chapman Publishing Ltd.